The use of scent technology to sell is an old, tried-and-true concept that many savvy brands and marketers have mastered. There’s the opulent aromatics of hotels, the calming herbal concoctions of the spa, and the fresh-baked cookie smell that real estate agents use to make you feel at home.
Scent, in the context of marketing, can make consumers want to buy more, stay longer, and keep coming back. In other words, scent can be a powerful tool to improve the business performance of commercial brands.
However, the successful execution of scent marketing is in large part still a major challenge. Initially, individuals created legacy scent systems to automate the scent output with minimal effort. Unfortunately, these scent systems came with the burden of maintenance overhead and the unpredictable outages (many undetected) that have compromised the overall strategy.
In this article, we look at a couple of industry examples of how legacy scent systems have missed and what today’s scent technology is doing to solve the past legacy challenges.
The Shortfalls of Scent Systems in the Luxury Hotel Industry
Luxury hotels have been in the scent branding game for years. For example, consumers know Westin for its white-tea fragrance that permeates throughout the lobby, rooms, and gift shops. This fresh and elegant scent creates the feeling of being pampered.
However, that feeling is fleeting when managers rely on simple scented candles, aerosols, or diffusers. Even modern scent services seem to have a short half-life. After a few months, they require refills or maintenance. They can also be unplugged or malfunction due to equipment failure or human error.
That’s where businesses can apply the latest scent technology to make a measurable improvement on marketing value and overall efficiency.
Smart Scent Technology Improves Quality and Reliability
Using a more intelligent approach, hotels can now implement scent delivery systems that provide high-quality fragrance and fail-proof features. These systems utilize IoT technology within multiple smart diffusers. They can monitor and communicate scent levels, track and manage fragrance refills, communicate with managers, as well as provide proactive maintenance alerts.
The result is a scent that never ends. When you are trying to infuse your brand with a carefully crafted fragrance, that means your fragrance marketing never ends either.
Applying Smart Scent Delivery Systems in Nursing Homes
Senior Living is another area where IoT technology can significantly improve scent delivery systems. Using app-based controls, administrators can fine-tune different living areas, providing different fragrance therapeutics at different scent levels depending on the need.
For example, the antiseptic smell of cleaners and sanitizers tends to give spaces like lobbies and entry areas a cold, institutional atmosphere. But implementing familiar fragrances like apple and cinnamon makes the facility feel warm and comforting, almost like a home where there’s always a fresh pie coming out of the oven.
They can monitor these calibrations over time, as well as receive maintenance alerts to help sustain reliable scent delivery. Each smart diffuser also connects to a central command center. This makes the task of data tracking, fragrance measurement, and service monitoring easier and safely streamlined.
This effect not only has marketing value but can actually improve the mood of family, residents, and staff as well. The potential for both primary and secondary benefits is very promising as nursing homes begin to implement new scent technology.
The Future of Scent Technology
The integration of smart diffusers allows businesses to improve quality, precision, monitoring, and reliability in various scented environments. That kind of capability is essential for experiential branding. If the fragrance falls short then so does the experience.
In the past, maintaining a scented ambiance required more work. From installing diffusers to replacing fragrance cartridges to manually ordering new stock, and maybe sniffing the air to guess if it was still working.
Now, scent technology automatically monitors scent performance ensuring the right fragrance impression is present consistently over time and across different locations. This technology additionally tracks the amount of fragrance in each cartridge and automatically orders and replaces it when empty. A handy app also works as a central command center for managers. This application proactively alerts for any needed maintenance before it causes an interruption in scent delivery.
This new system not only puts an end to guesswork and reactive manual labor but also provides valuable metrics for data-hungry management.
Welcome to the future of scent technology.
Expect more out of your fragrance marketing. Get started with ScentBridge today.